Wheels are a pretty expensive MTB upgrade, generally coming in at the £200 mark and some wheelsets setting you back up to a grand! To us at Grinding Gears that’s silly money – you can buy a decent bike for that kind of cash!
So when we saw that Superstar Components was having a sale and the Superstar Stans Crest wheetset was only £140 (down from £275) we jumped on it! Here’s how we found them so far:
Superstar Stans Crest Wheelset
Superstar have really made a name for themselves in the biking business for making brilliant products at rock bottom prices. These wheels are no different, the Superstar hubs spin wonderfully and are quiet, which is how we like them! They are also pretty light which we noticed straight away when switching over.
The rims themselves are lovely. Despite being light and made for cross country use, we’ve found they also work well on all mountain and can handle some light downhill as well. They are tubeless ready from the get-go which is a very handy, hassle-free feature. The only problem we found was that it can be quite, OK very, difficult to get tyres on. If you have wire beads you can pretty much forget it!
On the Trails
The Superstar Crest wheelset is smooth and sleek, taking everything in its stride and despite taking on “The Rocky Road” twice (think a faster rockier version of BPW’s Rim Dinger) they haven’t bent or buckled like everyone warned us they would.
Lots of reviews out there say that this rim is easily bent, but a large part of that is down to build quality. We checked and tightened up these wheels before taking them out and they are still running lovely despite being taken around many of South Wales’ MTB trails and bike parks.
Superb for the Cash
I dare you to go out and try find a better wheelset for this kind of money! Yes, while getting the tire on can be a bit of a pain, if you’re running tubeless then once its on you can forget about it for ages. Superstar also do an AMX wheelset for £130 that took our fancy, but the Stans brand name shamelessly took our custom.
After around a month of riding on these we’ve experienced very little in the way of problems although we have felt a little hesitant when hitting big things.We have ridden on better wheelsets, but for the money they truly are in a league of their own – so if you’re on a budget these are definitely worth the cash!
